The SWAT team knocks down another door
in search of someone’s bag of pot.
The snitch gave them the wrong address.
No drugs were found
Just a sleeping family man
Pulls a gun to protect himself.
But it’s OK, only he got shot.
A little girl, orphan now
Daddy died before her eyes,
Protecting her but not so well.
His hand on her face was all she knew
and now she’s just a ward of state.
Same judge who signed the warrant
justifying the unjust raid
sends her off to foster care,
Smugly thinks she’s better off.
Now two lives are wasted
on a non-existent bag of pot.
The snitch gets off, the cop goes free,
the judge escapes reprimand
and we pretend not to see
that life is different than before.
When it can happen to anyone
innocent and free of blame,
we’ve lost our freedom, lost our way
and we’ve done it to ourselves.
To gain it back would be difficult,
we’ve grown accustomed to this tragedy.
It’s all around us every day,
like winter’s chill and blowing wind, we acclimate to it.
But without our freedom we cannot be
that shining light upon a hill.
We may not have the strength to change
after all, it did not happen to us or ours.
But if we don’t, we all have lost
our lives in that same way.
—Anonymous